Furniture & drawer lock repair
Most drawer, desk and cabinet locks get fixed on the spot. We don't sell you a new desk.
A stuck cam lock or a lost drawer key is a five-minute job on the bench most of the time. We free the mechanism, cut a new key if the old one's gone, or swap the cam if it's sheared, and we don't quote you a replacement dresser to do it.
Price basis: per lock
What this covers
Cabinets, desks, mailboxes.
Furniture and drawer lock work is its own category on the bench, separate from the door hardware jobs. It's small cam locks, half-mortise desk locks, mailbox locks and the little disc-tumbler locks bolted into jewellery boxes and file cabinets. These fail differently than a door does: the cam shears off the back of the cylinder, the drawer runner binds and jams the bolt sideways, or somebody's had the key cut wrong for thirty years and it's finally worn through. None of it needs a locksmith van outside your house for an hour. Most of it is a ten to twenty minute repair once the piece is in front of us, or done on-site if the furniture doesn't travel.
Cabinet lock repair is the single most common call in this category — a kitchen or bathroom vanity cabinet with a cam lock that spins free instead of catching. Nine times out of ten that's the cam itself, a cheap stamped part that shears under normal use after a few years, not the cylinder. We replace the cam, test the catch through its full travel, and you keep the same key. If the cylinder's actually worn past its pins, we say so and rekey it instead, same visit.
Desks and file cabinets
Half-mortise and full-mortise desk locks — the kind set into the edge of a drawer front rather than bolted through a hole — are more particular to work on because the bolt has to line up with a strike cut into the desk frame itself. We carry a working stock of standard mortise cylinders in the common depths. If yours is an oddball import size we don't stock, we'll say so before we start rather than force a wrong-size lock into the mortise and leave you with a drawer that doesn't sit flush.
Mailboxes
Mailbox lock replacement is usually forced by a snapped key or a seized cam after weather exposure — cheap mailbox cylinders corrode faster than anything else we touch. We replace the cylinder, not the whole box, unless the door itself is bent past use. Community cluster boxes with USPS-controlled locks are outside our scope; that hardware belongs to the postal service, not the homeowner, and we won't touch a federal lock.
What we fix
- Cam locks in kitchen, bathroom and office cabinets
- Half-mortise and full-mortise desk and drawer locks
- Household mailbox cylinders, not USPS cluster boxes
- Small jewellery-box and file-cabinet disc-tumbler locks
- Cutting a fresh key when the original is lost or worn thin
What we hand back
- USPS-controlled cluster mailbox locks — federal hardware
- Antique furniture where the lock is part of the piece's value — we refer to a restorer
- Fire-rated document safes bolted inside furniture — see small safe service, and we still won't touch a vault-rated unit
- Commercial office-furniture fleets under a facilities contract
| Detail | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Price basis | Per lock. A cam lock and a mortise desk lock are priced differently once we see the part. |
| Typical time on the bench | Five to twenty minutes once the drawer or piece is in front of us. |
| On-site vs. bring it in | Small hardware travels well; if the piece is heavy or built-in, we come to it. |
| Keys included | One cut key with the repair; extras priced same as standard key cutting. |
| Not covered | USPS cluster boxes, antique value pieces, fire-rated units, commercial fleet contracts. |
How the repair runs
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Look at the mechanism, not just the symptom
Half the "broken lock" calls are actually a swollen drawer runner jamming the bolt sideways. We check the drawer travel first so we're not replacing a cylinder that was never the problem.
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Free it, or replace the sheared part
If the cam has sheared or the tumblers are worn past catching, we replace just that part. The surrounding furniture keeps its original hardware where it can.
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Cut a key if none exists
Lost the only key to a desk drawer or file cabinet? We can often cut a working key from the lock itself without drilling, on the standard blanks we carry.
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Test full travel before we call it done
Bolt in, bolt out, key in, key out, drawer closed and locked. We don't leave a job that catches sometimes.
Describe the drawer
Tell us what it's doing.
Sheared cam, lost key, jammed drawer, mailbox that won't turn — tell us which and we'll tell you what it needs before we schedule anything.
Next: small, personal safes
Small safe serviceOr see
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